THE HOARD OF THE GIBBELINS

by Lord Dunsany

The Gibbelins eat, as is well known, nothing less good than
man. Their evil tower is joined to Terra Cognita, to the lands
we know, by a bridge. Their hoard is beyond reason; avarice has
no use for it; they have a separate cellar for emeralds and a
separate cellar for sapphires; they have filled a hole with gold
and dig it up when they need it. And the only use that is known
for their ridiculous wealth is to attract to their larder a
continual supply of food. In times of famine they have even
been known to scatter rubies abroad, a little trail of them to
some city of Man, and sure enough their larders would soon be
full again.

Their tower stands on the other side of that river known to
Homer—ho rhoos okeanoio, as he called it—which surrounds
the world. And where the river is narrow and fordable the tower
was built by the Gibbelins' gluttonous sires, for they liked to
see burglars rowing easily to their steps. Some nourishment
that common soil has not the huge trees drained there with their
colossal roots from both banks of the river.

There the Gibbelins lived and discreditably fed.

Alderic, Knight of the Order of the City and the Assault,
hereditary Guardian of the King's Peace of Mind, a man not
unremembered among makers of myth, pondered so long upon the
Gibbelins' hoard that by now he deemed it his. Alas that I
should say of so perilous a venture, undertaken at dead of night
by a valourous man, that its motive was sheer avarice! Yet upon
avarice only the Gibbelins relied to keep their larders full,
and once in every hundred years sent spies into the cities of
men to see how avarice did, and always the spies returned again
to the tower saying that all was well.

It may be thought that, as the years went on and men came
by fearful ends on that tower's wall, fewer and fewer would come
to the Gibbelins' table: but the Gibbelins found otherwise.

Not in the folly and frivolity of his youth did Alderic
come to the tower, but he studied carefully for several years
the manner in which burglars met their doom when they went in
search of the treasure that he considered his. In every case
they had entered by the door.

He consulted those who gave advice on this quest; he noted
every detail and cheerfully paid their fees, and determined to
do nothing that they advised, for what were their clients now?
No more than examples of the savoury art, and mere half-
forgotten memories of a meal; and many, perhaps, no longer even
that.

These were the requisites for the quest that these men used
to advise: a horse, a boat, mail armour, and at least three
men-at-arms. Some said, "Blow the horn at the tower door";
others said, "Do not touch it."

Alderic thus decided: he would take no horse down to the
river's edge, he would not row along it in a boat, and he would
go alone and by way of the Forest Unpassable.

How pass, you may say, the unpassable? This was his plan:
there was a dragon he knew of who if peasants' prayers are
heeded deserved to die, not alone because of the number of
maidens he cruelly slew, but because he was bad for the crops;
he ravaged the very land and was the bane of a dukedom.

Now Alderic determined to go up against him. So he took
horse and spear and pricked till he met the dragon, and the
dragon came out against him breathing bitter smoke. And to him
Alderic shouted, "Hath foul dragon ever slain true knight?" And
well the dragon knew that this had never been, and he hung his
head and was silent, for he was glutted with blood. "Then,"
said the knight, "if thou would'st ever taste maiden's blood
again thou shalt be my trusty steed, and if not, by this spear
there shall befall thee all that the troubadours tell of the
dooms of thy breed."

And the dragon did not open his ravening mouth, nor rush
upon the knight, breathing out fire; for well he knew the fate
of those that did these things, but he consented to the terms
imposed, and swore to the knight to become his trusty steed.

It was on a saddle upon this dragon's back that Alderic
afterwards sailed above the unpassable forest, even above the
tops of those measureless trees, children of wonder. But first
he pondered that subtle plan of his which was more profound than
merely to avoid all that had been done before; and he commanded
a blacksmith, and the blacksmith made him a pickaxe.

Now there was great rejoicing at the rumour of Alderic's
quest, for all folk knew that he was a cautious man, and they
deemed that he would succeed and enrich the world, and they
rubbed their hands in the cities at the thought of largesse; and
there was joy amoung all men in Alderic's country, except
perchance among the lenders of money, who feared they would soon
be paid. And there was rejoicing also because men hoped
that when the Gibbelins were robbed of their hoard, they
would shatter their high-built bridge and break the golden
chains that bound them to the world, and drift back, they and
their tower, to the moon, from which they had come and to which
they rightly belonged. There was little love for the Gibbelins,
though all men envied their hoard.

So they all cheered, that day when he mounted his dragon,
as though he was already a conqueror, and what pleased them more
than the good that they hoped he would do to the world was that
he scattered gold as he rode away; for he would not need it, he
said, if he found the Gibbelins' hoard, and he would not need it
more if he smoked on the Gibbelins' table.

When they heard that he had rejected the advice of those
that gave it, some said that the knight was mad, and others said
he was greater than those what gave the advice, but none
appreciated the worth of his plan.

He reasoned thus: for centuries men had been well advised
and had gone by the cleverest way, while the Gibbelins came to
expect them to come by boat and to look for them at the door
whenever their larder was empty, even as a man looketh for a
snipe in a marsh; but how, said Alderic, if a snipe should sit
in the top of a tree, and would men find him there? Assuredly
never! So Alderic decided to swim the river and not to go by
the door, but to pick his way into the tower through the stone.
Moreover, it was in his mind to work below the level of the
ocean, the river (as Homer knew) that girdles the world, so that
as soon as he made a hole in the wall the water should pour in,
confounding the Gibbelins, and flooding the cellars, rumoured to
be twenty feet in depth, and therein he would dive for emeralds
as a diver dives for pearls.

And on the day that I tell of he galloped away from his
home scattering largesse of gold, as I have said, and passed
through many kingdoms, the dragon snapping at maidens as he
went, but being unable to eat them because of the bit in his
mouth, and earning no gentler reward than a spurthrust where he
was softest. And so they came to the swart arboreal precipice
of the unpassable forest. The dragon rose at it with a rattle
of wings. Many a farmer near the edge of the worlds saw him up
there where yet the twilight lingered, a faint, black, wavering
line; and mistaking him for a row of geese going inland from the
ocean, went into their houses cheerily rubbing their hands and
saying that winter was coming, and that we should soon have
snow. Soon even there the twilight faded away, and when they
descended at the edge of the world it was night and the moon was
shining. Ocean, the ancient river, narrow and shallow there,
flowed by and made no murmur. Whether the Gibbelins banqueted
or whether they watched by the door, they also made no murmur.
And Alderic dismounted and took his armour off, and saying one
prayer to his lady, swam with his pickaxe. He did not part from
his sword, for fear that he meet with a Gibbelin. Landed the
other side, he began to work at once, and all went well with
him. Nothing put out its head from any window, and all were
lighted so that nothing within could see him in the dark. The
blows of his pickaxe were dulled in the deep walls. All night
he worked, no sound came to molest him, and at dawn the last
rock swerved and tumbled inwards, and the river poured in after.
Then Alderic took a stone, and went to the bottom step, and
hurled the stone at the door; he heard the echoes roll into the
tower, then he ran back and dived through the hole in the wall.

He was in the emerald-cellar. There was no light in the
lofty vault above him, but, diving through twenty feet of water,
he felt the floor all rough with emeralds, and open coffers full
of them. By a faint ray of the moon he saw that the water was
green with them, and easily filling a satchel, he rose again to
the surface; and there were the Gibbelins waist-deep in the
water, with torches in their hands! And, without saying a word,
or even smiling, they neatly hanged him on the outer wall—and the tale is
one of those that have not a happy ending.